Wednesday Mini OT: Ocean's Second, AI Beats Tariffs, Lotus Promises A Car, $2K Oil Change?
All readers welcome
Hello, friends. I’m traveling this week and have been busier than I expected. So we will have some extra content on Friday to make up for it. In the meantime, let’s have a Mini OT. As always, interesting topics will be pinned.
Lots of trouble, usually serious
Lotus will return to the ICE supercar business in 2028 with a new hybrid V8 model expected to be called Esprit that is aimed to rival cars including the Ferrari 849 Testarossa.
The supercar’s hybrid powertrain will be centred around a new V8 engine supplied by Renault-Geely powertrain division Horse. Total power output will exceed 986bhp, confirmed Lotus.
The new supercar will be built alongside the Lotus Emira sports car at Hethel, in a boost for Lotus’s historical base in Norfolk.
The new car, which is codenamed Esprit, takes inspiration from 2024’s Theory 1 electric supercar concept. A teaser shot of the rear of the production car released by Lotus (below) shows the striking similarity with the concept, with the addition of two massive exhaust pipes.
Lotus has been collaborating with Horse in the development of the turbocharged V8, which is expected to set a new benchmark in power-to-weight ratios.
“Since we will be starting from scratch with this engine, we will make a lot of effort to improve the volume and also the weight of the engine,” Lotus CEO Feng Qingfeng said in a statement.
The new supercar will be a hybrid rather than a plug-in hybrid in order to save weight, bucking the recent trend to shift to PHEV drivetrains for supercars in cars such aAls the Aston Martin Valhalla, Lamborghini Temerario and Ferrari 296 GTB. Removing the need to plug in to charge allows Lotus to reduce the size of the battery and not fit charging-related componentry.
Ah, yes, Lotus is back with its traditional mix of hybrid power, an engine by “Horse”, and a CEO named after an Amazon USB charger brand. Still. If this means the Emira gets a longer lease on life and the Hethel folks arrest their slide into battery-powered irrelevance, who’s to complain?
Aliens and immigrants, now with a TED talk
When Neal Katyal won a coin flip against Pratik Shah and was given a slam-dunk, completely-prearranged, utterly-corporate-corrupt “win” against President Trump’s tariffs at the Supreme Court, he did what American attorneys and legal experts have done since the beginning of time: he used it as an opportunity to make a series of advertisements for an AI legal product.
Milbank partner Neal Katyal raised eyebrows this week with a new TED Talk revealing his use of an AI tool to prepare to argue against President Donald Trump’s tariffs at the US Supreme Court.
Katyal, a former acting solicitor general who has presented more than 50 cases before the court, argued the case in November after winning a coinflip over another advocate, Akin’s Pratik Shah. The court ultimately ruled 6-3 in favor of the coalition of businesses challenging the global tariffs.
“I walked up to that mahogany podium, and I won,” Katyal said in the talk, released Thursday, before revealing what he described as his secret weapon in prepping for the case—a “bespoke AI system” trained on 25 years of Supreme Court papers that was able to predict not just the justices’ questions, but their eventual opinions.
It’s unusual to see an advocate like Katyal take such personal credit for a win at the Supreme Court, and his remarks prompted pushback from court watchers, particularly considering the case in question involved multiple elite law firms and dozens of amicus briefs.
a) fuck this idiot sideways, he was nothing but a compliant tool for the Uniparty’s inexorable and irresistible demand that the spice must flow;
b) imagine thinking the world cares about how you “won” a case that couldn’t be lost.
The best response I’ve seen so far is this:
In a Tweet, Katyal boasted that “AI can’t read the room”, and that such a skill was something he possessed in abundance. Judging (ha) by the way he has been dragged and lampooned by his peers and the world at large, maybe he’d have been better off letting the AI do it.
Singing to the ocean, I can hear the ocean’s roar
I wasn’t aware of this, but the bulk of the abandoned Fisker Oceans were sold to a shop in New York City that uses them for taxis. I’m in the city this week and they are everywhere. Normally I wouldn’t tell you to read InsideEVs but this was done by my friend Raphael Orlove:
They are some of the most advanced cars on the road, but it’s an old brick building on a side street in the Bronx where Fisker Oceans go to get serviced to join New York City’s for-hire car fleet.
When electric vehicle startup Fisker went bankrupt in 2024, a fleet operator called American Lease saw an opportunity to serve the rideshare world in a place where it’s rapidly going all-electric. The company bought up the remaining stock of its vehicles, around 3,000 Ocean SUVs.
American Lease spent around $42.5 million to buy the cars at a fair market rate of around $13,000 each, according to bankruptcy documents. It then rents them out for as low as $399 a month to Uber and Lyft drivers. As you read this, they’re picking up fares in New York right now.
It’s neat to see them on the road. Between that and the surprising number of Lucid Air sedans being used as “black cars”, there’s a genuinely futuristic aspect to New York at the moment. Let’s hope the Oceans keep, ah, rolling.
Source: trust me, bro
Scotty Reiss is claiming that a Mercedes-Benz dealer charged a friend of hers $2,000 for an oil change on a new GLA. There was probably a time when an obviously imaginary story like that would have “gone viral” for her without causing any blowback. But now she has people from Mercedes-Benz asking to name and shame the dealership.
Which, unsurprisingly, she just doesn’t feel comfortable doing.
It always makes me laugh to see autowriters briefly put on a Consumer Protection Cap. Because it is always the dealers at the receiving end of their wrath. And why not? Dealers don’t give out free stuff or pay for your travel. In the meantime, uh, watch out for those $2,000 oil changes. They’re totally real.
Well, since it's an open thread and all that, I have a question for the commentariat. I was shooting the breeze with a friend of mine who is clearly more intelligent than I am. This man does not play chess and does not understand my fondness for it; furthermore, he disdains my hypothesis that any man of significant intellect owes it to himself to at least take a crack at the game. Since this is a community comprised primarily of men of significant intellect, I'm curious to know how many chess players we count among our ranks. How many of us play chess? Are there any legitimately talented players here? Am I talking out of my ass when I state that he who would call himself a Renaissance man must be capable of playing a workmanlike game of chess?
In MotoGP it's all lemons for LeMans... for the Marquez brothers.
Bagnaia, with a shocking return to form, thunders to pole position after a direct placement into Q2. Marc is forced into Q1 with a poor practice but gets through with an all time lap record and then takes 2nd position on the grid for the race. Bez, the championship leader, starts from 3rd. Then come Digi, the most consistent Duc rider this year, Acosta who serves as KTMs shining light, and Quartararo taking the Yamaha to its highest start position this year.
In the beginning of the race Bez makes a good start, but not as good as Jorge Martin who comes from 8th to 1st within the first three turns of the race. Martin then simply walks away from everyone else in an absolutely unbelievable turn of events. Bagnaia falls to 3rd and begins fighting it out with Bezecchi. Marc is the big loser and shuffles back behind Mir for 7th position.
Mir is stuck behind Quartararo for the entirety of the sprint and fails to pass, which is a testament to how sharp the #20 must be in the braking zones.
For Marc Marquez disaster strikes with a high side where he catches the bike with his leg and breaks his foot. This, however, led to the revelation that a screw in his recently injured shoulder had worked loose and was rubbing on a nerve. A likely cause for his still not looking as sharp as he was last year.
In the race proper Jorge Martin attempts, and fails, to make the same set of moves through the initial turns. His competitors were keen not to have a repeat occur. He is shuffled down to 7th place behind Ogura and Bagnaia. Bagnaia would make some aggressive moves and place behind Bez by lap 7. Two laps later and he is within half a second.
At the one third distance mark Bezecchi failed to open up a gap of more than a second and the front 5 were still packed fairly tight together. Jorge Martin was about 3.5s down from the race lead and worked past Ogura and close down on the big pack ahead of him. The 11 lap mark has Jorge 1.6s behind Acosta in 5th and running him down fast, two tenths or more quicker.
Bagnaia, continuing his run of bad races, crashes out in lap 16 for a DNF. Acosta is second now, with Martin hot behind him. Two laps later and he has Acosta firmly behind him.
Ai Ogura, in the meantime, has rallied in the way he did at COTA and is closing down on the lead trio as well.
Martin is cutting the lead of Bez down by 3 or 4 tenths a lap and looks incredible on the bike. With three to go he passes Bez for the lead and the eventual win.
Ai gets by a fading Acosta for the Aprilia triple podium, a first.
Digiantonnio is once again the strongest Ducati on circuit and he block passes Acosta in the last turn on the last lap for thirteen points.
Jorge Martin is now one point behind Bez in the championship and he looks excellent on the bike. He hasn't even figured out qualifying yet but his pace is solid at the start and blistering with a lesser fuel load (sprint + latter half of race).
MotoGP is in Catalonia this weekend. MotoAmerica is at Barber. WorldSBK is in the Czech Republic.
As always, MotoGP and KotB are the series to watch.
A few laps